Telephone line and power line surge and lightning protection has been described in applicant's prior patents and applications as listed in the cross reference above. Additionally several single telephone line and multi party line devices have been disclosed in applicants prior patents also as listed above and as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,084 issued Mar. 24, 1987, "REMOTE ACTUATED SWITCH" (RAS) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,700,380 issued Oct. 13, 1987, "SOLID STATE REMOTE ACTUABLE SWITCH" (SSS) relate to remotely ACTUABLE solid state switches useable as solid state switches in the present invention as building blocks, for isolating and for bridging telephone lines for the purposes of routing, managing the calls and/or testing the telephone line(s).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,710,949 issued Dec. 1, 1987, "TELEPHONE LINE FAULT LOCATING DEVICE" relates to the metallic testing of a telephone line, also called as the "Maintenance Termination Unit" (MTU) in the industry.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,669,111 issued May 26, 1987 "POLARITY RING DIRECTOR" (PRD), and U.S. Pat. No. 4,771,451 issued Sep. 13, 1988 "POLARITY RING DIRECTOR" (PRD); and U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,899 issued Jun. 23, 1987, "FREQUENCY RING DIRECTOR" (FRD); relate to the directing of incoming calls at the subscriber end of a multi-party telephone line.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,669,112 issued May 26, 1987, "AUTOMATIC TELEPHONE NUMBER INDICATING DEVICE" (ANI), provides a metallic (analog) indication i.e. identifies a calling party to the central office equipment for billing purposes in a party line environment.
Many surge and lightning protection products are currently available on the market today but none of them provide reliable surge and lightning protection above and beyond, providing one to three MOVs, and except perhaps warn you by way of a little light or a buzzer indicating that the MOV has failed, and that now you are without surge and lightning protection. Thus these sacrificial devices leave you without protection when you need them most. None of them are designed to protect the equipment to be protected and unit itself so that it takes advantage of a solid state switch or an electromechanical switch as an inexpensive fault tolerant isolation means to provide an improved surge and lightning protection.
Then there are those that provide stacks of transient voltage suppressors (TSV) at a very high price, such that they cost much more than the basic electronic equipment to be protected, such as the micro-wave oven, TVs and stereo systems, etc.
The present invention provides the following advantages over the devices currently available in the market:
1) Even though relatively inexpensive, and it provides continued superior quality surge and lightning protection. PA0 2) It is designed to provide continuous usage and protection as compared to other products that leave the equipment unprotected, (and at best only indicate or inform the user that it has failed and is no longer protecting your equipment. They are designed to be thrown away.) PA0 3) It additionally provides continuous over-voltage protection, providing isolation for the equipment or the protected line from the source until the over-voltage condition has subsided; PA0 4) Eliminates the serious problem of leaving the equipment without protection, just when the protection is needed the most, as in the situation of surges, lightning and thunder storm conditions. PA0 5) It is easy to maintain and restore back into service.
More expensive and complete systems including, Power Line Protection, Management and Monitoring, Noise Filtering and secure Surge and Lightning Protection including secure Multiple Stage Protection and Noise Filtering, various ways of incorporating new and innovative Power Supplies and managing the business and home environment via communications links including numerous means of switching and isolating the load from the line have already been discussed in the family of referenced US Patents and Patents pending.
The present invention is described more particularly in the summary and the detailed description as follows: